Eight Hundred Years of Prayer:
It isn’t too late for America’s noble experiment to succeed. But that depends on the courage and commitment of American people of faith. Adapted from a homily delivered on January 15, 2015, at the Red Mass of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.
The Catholic tradition of the Red Mass dates back to the year 1245, when the Bishop of Paris brought together the lawyers and law students working in his city to pray that the Holy Spirit would bless them with wisdom and good counsel. The Church has been praying for holy and virtuous lawyers for eight hundred years. Maybe another eight hundred years will finally do the trick!
As attorneys, your call is to serve the Lord in the life of the mind and in the forum of civil government and public life. Each of you has the privilege of formation in the fundamental contours of American public life and law. With that privilege comes the obligation, indeed the vocation, to be leaders in American public life and discourse.
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, declares that since the lay faithful are “tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer.” Your task is to shed light on the contours of our public life and to bring to bear, both in legal and political structures, the light of Christ the Redeemer.
To many people, the idea of public life transformed by Christ the Redeemer is an uncomfortable thought. We have an instinctual discomfort with the intersection of faith and public life because we’re trained according to the mantra of “separation of Church and state.” The common perception of most Americans is that faith is “supposed to be” the private relationship we share with the divine. We’re told this unique relationship is expressed most appropriately in worship and quiet devotion. To be sure, worship and private devotion are certainly components of faith. But faith is also meant to be lived in a public way, not “hidden under a bushel basket.”
My friend and mentor Archbishop Chaput often says: “faith is personal, but it is never private.” And as attorneys, you certainly understand the value the Founding Fathers themselves placed on the role of religious life in the public sphere.
- Religion and Public Life ...
- What Is the Purpose of Law? ...
- Fighting the Dictatorship of Relativism ...
................
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario